1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to facilitating payments by a third party. More specifically, it relates to directly submitting payment to a merchant (such as a doctor's office) by payment card wherein the merchant does not need to run the payment card information through their card terminal or point-of-sale system.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
Third party administrators, insurance companies, and large self-funded corporations (herein “Payers”) adjudicate claims, compare them to a benefit plan and make the decision to write checks in payment for the claims. Currently, Payers are required to print checks and explanation of benefit (EOB) forms for delivery to the health care providers. The EOB lists the amount the health care provider billed the Payer's company and the amount the Payer's company paid on the claim. It may also list the contractual discount amount and the patient responsibility. If the claim is denied, the EOB will explain the reason for denial.
In an effort to streamline this process, Applicant developed a process described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,792,686 (reissued as RE44748 and RE43904), the specification of which is incorporated herein by reference. The '686 patent discloses a method to deploy a payment card to pay medical service claims. Since there is a one-to-one relationship between the payment card and the specific claim, reconciling the payment is made substantially more efficient. However, the method still requires the medical service provider (typically the bookkeeper) to receive the stored value card information including the expiration date, account number, payment amount, verification codes and the like and repeatedly input the information as a card-not-present transaction through the credit card terminal. The transaction must then be authorized, cleared and settled before the service provider receives its funds.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,249,893 streamlined this process going forward by capturing certain data values in the initial process and then utilized them to implement a direct push-through payment or straight-through payment (STP) to the service provider's merchant account. The service provider does not need to perform the administrative tasks of running a card payment transmitted by the payer. Rather, the service provider is simply “paid” receiving an authorization confirmation of the completed financial transaction and an explanation of benefits detailing how the funds were applied.
However, to implement a direct push-through payment to the service provider's merchant account it is necessary to know the identity of the acquirer (or payment card processor). An acquirer is a bank or financial organization that processes credit and/or debit card payments for products or services for a merchant. In some cases the link between the service provider's merchant account and the associated acquirer may be readily available but to implement a robust payment system the ability to implement the direct push-through payment must be available even when the specific identity of the acquirer (processor) is unknown.
However, in view of the art considered as a whole at the time the present invention was made, it was not obvious to those of ordinary skill in the field of this invention how the shortcomings of the prior art could be overcome.